Records Show N.j. Race Profiling

November 27, 2000

Nearly 100,000 pages of documents made public Monday show that New Jersey state troopers stopped overwhelmingly disproportionate numbers of minorities in searches for drugs, the state's attorney general says. However, no evidence has been found that New Jersey worked to hide evidence that troopers searched minority motorists based solely on the color of their skin, he said. The documents were expected to show that for more than a decade state leaders knew about the large numbers of minorities being searched and tried to balance that knowledge against legal drug-busting strategies. "There was no overarching conspiracy to cover this up. There was an attempt to understand it. There was an attempt to put it into context," said Atty. Gen. John Farmer Jr. In an April 1999 report, former Atty. Gen. Peter Verniero admitted minorities were targeted. That came a year after gunshots from two troopers wounded three minority men during a traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike and sparked a furor over racial profiling. "My hope is by getting all of this out, the people will understand, will see the whole picture," he said.